Page 4 of Henrietta

Hetty did not personally believe that her two and twenty years strictly constituted ‘old’ but plainly to Timothy it made her a crone.

‘It would not take much work to cut a dash,’ he continued. ‘I could help you, even …’

Hetty, affecting deafness as she pulled off her riding gloves, did not answer.

As much as she might still find herself – when standing upon the sidelines at Almack’s – gazing wistfully at the glittering paragons of the age, she knew all too well the impossibility of joining their ranks. The agonies of shyness she used to suffer might no longer be as potent, the faux pas she had made in her first Season might be behind her, but in the company of persons she did not know well, she still felt far from easy. Indeed, even when she was not tongue-tied, her conversation could only be described as commonplace, her bearing as awkward, and charm entirely elusive. Happily, Hetty had long ago reconciled herself to merely getting by in Society, to have made a few agreeable friends, and no longer to step upon gentlemen’s feet during the cotillion. This was enough for her.

‘But what about my dress?’ Trixie overrode Timothy impatiently. ‘I cannot abide more white satin and—’

‘Am I very much in the way, or may I join you?’ interrupted a voice from the staircase. ‘I confess I know very little about white satin.’

Trixie gave a shriek. Timothy, in the midst of handing his hat to the butler, dropped it in shock.

‘Arthur?’

‘Arthur!’

For a moment, all of three of them merely stared, agog, as the new Lord Allerton descended the stairs towards them. Then, in the next, Trixie and Timothy leapt towards him, throwing to the wind every precept of gentility to swarm around him as if they were children of eight and ten, not young persons of eighteen and twenty: tugging on his arm and pelting him with questions.

‘Does Mama know you are here?

‘When did you arrive?’

‘We were not expecting you for a sennight!’

Arthur was laughing as he tried his attention equally between them. ‘Yes – Not half an hour ago – I know, I wished to surprise you – Unhand me, you barbarians!’

Hetty did not join the revelry, standing – quite frozen – several feet away. Her mind could not quite trust its own eyes. The familiarity of the sight – Arthur, here, in Berkeley Square, where she used to see him every day – was utterly surreal.

‘Hetty!’ Arthur said, disengaging himself from his siblings’ grasping hands and striding towards her. ‘What – no greeting?’

It was the teasing note in his voice that finally jolted her out of her shock. Hetty stepped forward to meet him, hands instinctively stretching out for his, as if touching him would serve as the final proof she needed.

Arthur seized both her hands in his own and squeezed them. ‘How are you? You look just the—’

He was beaming as he looked at her and—

It was only a moment. The smallest, most tiny moment, and yet to Hetty it was life-altering. For Arthur, looking Hetty full in the face for the first time, appeared to start, brows flying up. ‘You look well!’ Then, a correction: ‘Very well!’

‘Are you so surprised?’ she said in a passable imitation of her usual manner. ‘Did you expect me to look haggard?’

He cast a swift glance over her. It was the kind of look she had seen him give a thousand times before. Only not to her. Never before to her.

‘No, I just – It is just – your hair has grown.’ For a moment, Arthur looked a shade unnerved.

Hetty raised a self-conscious hand up to her curls. ‘Hair does tend to …’

‘Is it not the finest surprise?’ Lady Allerton appeared at the top of the stairs, beaming. ‘Come, we are in the drawing room – let us be comfortable.’

She beckoned them, and they hastened directly upstairs, not pausing to change their dress, for nobody wished to waste a moment. The Allertons fell into the drawing room, talking and laughing and speaking over one another, where they only had to wait a moment before their butler Dawson appeared, bearing a pot of tea, plates of fruit and slices of still-warm plum cake.

‘I can hardly believe it,’ Lady Allerton was saying, gazing at her eldest son as if afraid to lose sight of him for a moment more. ‘To have you here, with us again – is it done, then? You are sold out?’

‘Furloughed,’ Arthur corrected. ‘Though only to expedite my return: selling out is certainly my intention.’

Lady Allerton heaved a relieved sigh.

‘Not dressed quite in the current style, of course,’ Timothy added, looking his brother over critically, ‘but I think it will pass, given the circumstances.’